Sometimes, when life is on the ugly side, when the kids bicker and foreheads bruise and coffee spills and my thoughts are bottle necking (because they don't have a decent word to wear), I feel like this Grumpy McPricklyton shrub in my front yard.And when I feel this way, I'm telling you, I want to run away from home. Actually, I just want to go five miles and come back. But today I didn't have the luxury of 45 kid-free, jogger-free, word-free minutes to run my sanity route. Because Larry was at work (and come to think of it, still is), and the kids needed to nap after church.

So at the first chance I found, which happened to be an hour before sunset, I took my prickly, irritable self on a tour of the front yard. And wouldn't you know, even within nap-monitoring distance, I saw enough to remind me....

That I have a kindred color in my favorite tree.And that though her visits are short, her rays half-hearted, though she wears a thick white winter sweater, she still sheds light on unmissable beauty. It's likely my neighbors think I'm a few pixels short of a full photo for gallivanting around my front yard like I was photographing Katahdin or something. And they might be right. After all, it isn't normal to ask your poop-laden lawn to pose for a portrait.

But it makes me happy to scavenge for beauty using my regular Jo camera in my regular Jo yard. And it's easier for the day to swallow labels like hum-drum, sea level and suburban, when the final word reads beautiful.